The Usual Suspects

Art of the non-lecture

Announcing the first in a series of tongue-in-cheek (intellectually sound) non-lectures conceived to challenge the cult of personality and aloofness in the creative field, and to provide a platform for both experienced and upstart critical thinkers to exchange knowledge. This series uses the spectres of the usual suspects and the areas of research associated with their various oeuvres as a starting point for generating new conversations.

The first of these meetings takes place on Monday, the 26th of January, 2009 when Jacques Derrida will NOT be presenting an inaugural explication of the Art of the Non-lecture and the Spectre of the Public Intellectual. At 18.00 hours, at the Nieuwe Ooster Begraafplaats. Please email to artofthenonlecture@googlemail.com with further questions.

In a series of ‘non-lectures’ the Usual Suspects propose the mock staging of a lecture where we “invite” intellectuals who are perhaps dead or never likely to turn up (Edward Said, Hegel, Naomi Klein as examples), and when they never pitch, hold a round-table discussion of our own with those guests who are actually present and who could speak around the topic already laid out for the evening (themes such as: postcoloniality in European exhibition-making; art’s autonomy or lack thereof in upcoming biennales; new institutionalism). These discussions will be held in a less formal setting – a café, bar or restaurant near the supposed lecture venue in an institutional auditorium. Given five or ten minutes each member of the audience (now the discussion participants) are offered a platform to contribute their perspective on the specific theme of the evening and use this to generate further dialogue. The model will hopefully inspire cross-pollination between disciplines and provide a forum for less established creatives and thinkers to air their views while being balanced by other more experienced members of the art community. Challenging top-down modes of knowledge exchange these sessions opens up art conversations to encompass the shifts in audience-institution, curator-artist, east-west, centre-periphery and public-private binaries.